Unsnappable strings
by Chartis
Summary: Whoever said that being a musician is cool must have had one botched sense of humour, but in some cases, when you cast aside the messy knot of a hierarchy, some whacky co-players and a concertmaster who goes postal at the sight of dirt, life seems much better than it could have been. Modern orchestra AU, Eren/Mikasa
1. A Score for Strings

_**Disclaimer: **I don't own Shingeki no Kyojin or its characters  
_

_**A/N: **Who would have thought, an orchestra AU of all things. I guess I should blame the Mariinsky Concert Hall and Mr. Jean Sibelius for that, getting me that impressed and excited. But despite all the concerts I've been to throughout my short life and those hellish seven years of music school, I'm not a member of an orchestra, nor will I probably ever be, so I have no idea how it **really **works. The only sources are Wikipedia and my own imagination. Please forgive me, those who realise that I've made a huge mistake or ten somewhere there; my ignorance will drive me to my grave one of these days._

_As for the spelling, can't help it - I was taught British English at school, and it got so deeply engraved in my brain, I start breathing steam when I see those "u"s missing. Sorry if it bothers you._

_Also, Eren might be a bit OOC closer to the end... Oh, whom am I trying to fool, I probably messed up all over, but I figured that with titans nonexistent and parents alive, Eren at least would behave if only a bit differently... Oh well. Rant end. Hope you enjoy!_

* * *

The many rows of worn, but soft, red, velvet-faced chairs filling the St. Maria Concert Hall had seen, heard, and, most prominently, felt a lot over the course of their existence. They'd bore the weight of overstuffed multimillionaires and their fancily decorated lovers, of politicians who firmly believed that the whole world rested on their shoulders and the hyper workers of the media trying to get a bite, middle-class businessmen hoping to make an impression of appreciation, and then those who sat on the very edge, fisted their hands and held back tears as music filled their systems. But that was in the evenings. During the day, the cushions enjoyed their deserved rest while the not so famous St. Maria Symphonic Orchestra did what it did most of the time - that is, rehearsed, even though there was not a day except the days of performing that every single member was present.

And rehearse they did: it started at about ten in the morning, usually at the expense of the brass, who thus didn't have the option of indulging in anything remotely brazen the night prior; a couple of hours later saw the strings slowly trickling in, beginning with the double-basses, then cellos, and then the violas and the violins, the latter two usually turning up at the same time - it was a quirk of many a violinist in their band to come earlier than scheduled and then grumble about it. It only lasted for the duration of the violas' temper, though came back with a vengeance during the breaks, but by the time everyone had been worked through and chewed out, they more agreed with the hysterical strings than not. There were also days, sometimes, that they would be joined by a harp or a piano, but those didn't stay in the same room for long: in a couple of hours, they'd be off to their own quarters where heavy instruments didn't have to be hauled around with the additional risk of damaging something or messing up the tuning, and the rest of the group would play well into the night. That was the norm, and then there was the dreaded day - the performance day.

That day started with strings coming in before the brass even woke and clamming into the entrance hall, leaving the stage be because the conductor himself hadn't woken yet and the grumpy key-lady wouldn't open it up for anybody else; when the winds finally arrived, even later than their usual 'late' because they had been practicing until 3 am at the very least the previous night, never mind the neighbours, they just ignored the mess of music sheets spread out on the couches and the floor and filed into their places in the performance hall - usually one or the other member had a knack for opening locked doors without even noticing, - yawning like mad and trying to keep their jaws in place. The conductor was usually hot on their heels, if not already there: he'd give a smack on the head for every time one fell asleep while playing, and Mr Smith was well-known for the heaviness of the hand that he distributed those smacks with, especially among those who got them often enough. That happened mostly with the sidelines, who were relatively far from the main clamour, but the leading strings sometimes got some too, and the brass would snicker quietly, hiding their faces behind their instruments, while the former sent them killer glares. They kept at it for the better part of the morning and then some more, before the band was dismissed for a couple of hours to get a breather or, much more popular, a nap or a meek dozen of cups of very strong coffee, and at a long last, when most of the kinks in the programme - St. Maria knows you can never be rid of all - had been worked through with a fine-toothed comb, the slightly more sprightly orchestra gathered once more for the final run-through. The violins, namely their one and only concertmaster, in charge of overseeing that everything ran smoothly right after the conductor, got even more neurotic, and the former's slight (far from that, as argued by many) case of obsessive-compulsive disorder made the last-minute preparations that much worse for the 'common folk', who tripped over their shoes trying to live up to his ludicrously high standards.

September 21st was, expectedly, not much different.

On the agenda was Sibelius' Symphony No. 2 for the first part and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 for the second, piano solo by Annie Leonhardt, who was nowhere to be found at an hour and a half before starting; she was the point of least concern for the concertmaster at the moment, though, as he had an assortment of various other problems to attend to, such as making rounds across the stage and ensuring that no violins were wracked on any heads and no coffee was spilled onto the scores; his assistant, a golden-haired young woman, was just as busy flitting among the strings, mostly checking up on people's dubious good health and dishing out coffee to be spilled later to her vertically challenged superior's horror: there was a scarf to be removed from one of the basses' necks, because it was bound to get unbearably hot after half an hour of playing non-stop, and gods forbid a musician from fainting during a performance as big as the one they were giving, not to mention there were only two basses present for the day as most of the orchestra was down with flu. There was also the gluttonous young cello that seemed hell-bent on devouring a potato 'while she could' and consequently getting grease and crumbs all over her instrument, and not even St. Maria could save her from a long and cruel death after the night ended if the concertmaster noticed; the viola sitting nearby, a veteran of the band, just wouldn't shut up about all the mind-boggling ways of torture she'd heard or seen him apply to unlucky newbies, and it was most certainly imperative that the woman stopped unintentionally urging the people around her to vomit, the potato-loving girl a fascinating exception. The principal trumpet had bitten his tongue, again, probably in the process of scaring the shit out of the youngsters, but there was little anyone could do for him now that the concertmaster, the name Levi, caught sight of him bleeding all over his trumpet, not that Petra, the assistant concertmaster, was intent on lifting a finger to shield him from the wrath of her closest superior: that was what you got for treating your underlings with glaring disrespect, in her book.

"Mikasa, are you rea- ah!"

A sharp metallic pang, followed by a low-tuned hum, brought Petra's attention back to the basses, and her mind tinged with curious suspicion that turned to uneasy apprehensiveness once her eyes glimpsed the swirling curls of a snapped string dangling stiffly from the neck of a double-bass; the potato girl, who was, fortunately, refraining from touching the scarf-clad obsidian-haired bass' instrument, looked rather terrified, while the bass herself seemed decidedly unperturbed, even with a thin trickle of red trailing down her right hand. The handkerchief offered by the only other bass, Ian, helped to stopper the flow, but while the stain spreading across the pristine white was small, the wound probably nothing more than a tiny shallow scratch that would close on its own in minutes and the string easily replaceable, the thing worrying the assistant concertmaster and the musicians loitering near the area was the very fact of a string snapping shortly before a performance.

"Are you all right?" Approaching the girl, Petra tentatively reached out for the injured appendage and was presented with a scrape that, even with a lot of exaggeration, couldn't be called a wound, and a monotone "I'm fine". "I'll bring some disinfectant and a band aid, just in case. Do you have spare strings?"

She almost went off after receiving a nod from the girl - almost, because there was painful uncertainty painted all over the surrounding faces, and that was not a state for an orchestra to play in. "It's just a superstition, guys, don't worry," she eased the tension to the best of her ability, beaming a smile that was supposed to reassure - Levi had called it magical once, - but was met with the same twisted expressions.

"But... But what if..."

"If anything happens, I'll deal with it, that's all there is to it." Surprisingly, the voice that addressed the taut audience was Mikasa's, and while it didn't help in alleviating the cloud of gloom that was attempting to settle over the cellos, at the very least it pushed them back to their seats, allowing Petra to map a beeline to the backstage through the bustling brass settling into their places.

* * *

Eren clutched his horn against his chest and stomach as he engaged in a tricky sport of weaving between chairs, music-stands and people without knocking anything over, cups of coffee and bottles of water also participating in the game; the woodwinds were already there, setting up their scores and cluttering the ever-narrow space, and he slunk past, almost brushing by them in the process. Armin shot him a smile before returning to checking the clasps on his oboe, and Bertholdt was so immersed in his sheets, stewing over them with a pencil held in his mouth, that he wasn't aware of the bassoon slowly inclining towards the floor where it was propped against his chair; they'd all seen each other plenty throughout the day. Christa was another story, though.

"Hello, Eren!" the girl chirped, setting down her flute and giving him one of her small, kind smiles.

"Hey, Christa, why so late? Did you keep chickening out until the last minute?" he teased, feeling immune to the neurotic hustle boiling all around: he had something big to look forward to after the concert, and it set his nerves to mild excited tingling.

"Family business," she retorted modestly and in a somewhat reserved manner, looking sort of guilty for having skipped almost all of the performance day rehearsals. "And yes, I am... a little scared, but it's all right. Ymir's right behind me, after all."

"What is it I'm hearing? Are you finally falling for me?" The tall brunette's sultry voice drifted from the seat behind the blonde and a pair of long arms coiled around her shoulders from behind, a narrow chin finding its way onto the smaller girl's shoulder with ease; Christa went pink in the face with a barely contained blush and the smile was off before one could say 'tease', replaced by a visage of mixed surprise and indignation.

"I take my words back, you're the worst sedative ever," she chided in a curt tone and glared at the offender out of the corner of her eye - as much of a glare as the soft Christa could put up, - and Eren hurried to leave, as, one, they didn't seem to mind him anymore, and two, he didn't want to see any more of their weird interaction that didn't fit into any sensible relationship frame known to him.

As little as half a minute was wasted for him to finally reach his appointed seat, if you excluded the one time Reiner accidentally pulled a full-power low C with his tuba right into his ear after getting an unexpected slap on the back, successfully setting Eren to tumbling down in shock and bringing a number of items with him: the burly blond tuba, being the helpful bear that he had always been in the eyes of their small group of music arts seniors, tried to lend a hand, but only got as far as dragging Eren up to his feet before knocking down several more music-stands with his broad shoulders and being deemed a bull in a china shop; the horn player was moderately stressed by the time he planked himself into his chair, glad to, if one could call it that, escape the hustling commotion that was the pre-rehearsal orchestra. The curly-haired trumpet in the row before him turned around and asked his name in a voice dripping with irked malice that reeked of false and artificiality, but Eren felt his guts clench anyways, the sensation doing decidedly no good to his already threadbare nerves: his worries revolved around the fact that it was going to be his very first official performance outside the university walls, the same notion pretty much applicable to his year-mates, all of them there under the conditions of the semester-long orchestra practice mandatory for the graduating class. He did realise, if only with his mind alone, that it would be little different from what they did every other month at the university for various occasions, but his thoughts kept coming back to the depressing gravity of the situation, as compared to the play-and-have-fun-along-the-way policy their dean instilled, not to forget that they would be graded this time around.

"Hey, brat," the trumpet from before snarled with a sneer, "don't get too cocky just because you've managed to get here. You could get kicked out at an- owww!"

Eren watched with wary astonishment as the man nursed his bitten tongue while trying to hold back bitter tears of pain: it looked pretty unpleasant, and the boy found it easy enough to voice an uncertain inquiry, which only earned him a hateful glare and the beginnings of a scathing retort that was cut short out of the blue. When he turned his head to whatever the trumpet was staring at, now pale and displaying a wide range of emotions all connected with fear, his eyes were met with the most fearsome expression he'd seen in his lifetime, one full of truest malice and genuine killing intent coming from a man a head shorter than Eren himself at the very least, whom he vaguely recognized as one of the first violins.

"Auruo," he started, and Eren would bet his full scholarship it was much more of a growl than the blond's earlier attempt, though there was little difference from a normal low voice, "get that filth cleaned this instant," he ordered while gesturing to the blood dripping down on the golden brass of the instrument lying on the blond's lap, and the trumpet nearly stood to attention, barking a terrified "Yessir!" and fumbling frantically through his pockets in search of a hanky or a tissue, paying no more attention to the inky-haired man leaving the vicinity.

"Yo, punk." A body topped by a crudely cropped mop of ashy blond toppled down onto a nearby seat and made itself comfortable by slinging an arm over the back of the chair and carelessly dropping the trombone it had been carrying onto the soft case; a smug sneer snailed onto the body's face and made it all the more disgusting for Eren to look at. "Feel like shitting bricks yet?"

"Ask yourself that first," he gibed back, not bothering to face the other, but was quite baffled when nothing came to bite him in the ass within the next couple of moments, which prompted him to take an actual look at the foul-mouthed bastard: the latter had adopted a look of conflicted shame and insubstantial fear, and, well, Eren just couldn't pass up the opportunity. "What, you've already asked?"

"Shut up, you wanker!" Jean literally exploded in a burst of embarrassment and fury, landing a few droplets of spit on Eren's face in the process, which he wiped in repugnance.

"Don't spit on me, horseface! You want a fight or what?!"

"I say why not?!"

"Shut up, you shitty noobs, we're starting!" the man called Auruo, alarmed at the commotion and looking thoroughly pissed, barked at them - he seemed to be doing that often; there still was a slight lisping quality to his pronunciation.

"Cells off!" the concertmaster's voice boomed over the stage, and the beginning of hell was officially declared.

* * *

Two and a half hours later saw the worn-out musicians in the middle of the intermission, chugging down water like nomads of the desert and desperately trying to get a respite in the ten minutes that they were provided; the backstage was unfairly cramped and it was a feat to secure a full-on seat for oneself, even with a certain part of the orchestra smoking their break away, but at the very least the air conditioning was working properly and kept the room from going stale within minutes. Mikasa wasn't feeling particularly exhausted, though, thanks to the physique she'd developed over the years of playing an instrument as tall as her own body, but the lack of sleep and coffee overdose was slowly but surely catching up to her, gluing tens of pounds' worth of fatigue to her eyelids that were quite serious in their threats to close for the rest of the night in the middle of the second part. Leaning against the wall, near where the cellos were seated, and sipping her water, she was desperately trying to ward off sleep and listening in on the mindless chatter, following the topic fitfully and stealing occasional glances at Eren to make sure he was doing fine and not getting into another fight. She would have approached him, had she not been reprimanded, countless times at that, for bothering him for nothing, and own experience is the best teacher; a lot of time had passed since he last got mad at her for it, though, but she still held back, more for feeling sort of out of place in the company of brass, of all things. Sasha asked for her confirmation of something then, and she absently nodded, neither looking nor really listening to what they were gossiping about, but a collective gasp and a single small 'wow' in a somewhat familiar voice sharply pulled her out of her world.

"Seriously? That guy?"

"That's... Well, unexpected."

"Aren't you too good for someone like him? You're, what, the prodigy of this year..."

For the few moments while Mikasa's brain was returning to function, the emotion that reined on her face was stupefaction, but once the wits were back, the potato girl got a withering and accusing glare, as well as a seemingly innocent inquiry that was spoken in a tone that could only be labelled as threatening.

"What did you just say, Sasha?"

The bronze-haired cello all but wilted in her seat as her 'innocuous' remark from a few moments prior turned out to have been a big mistake, and the rest of the strings laughed their heads off at her expense, though it was somewhat unclear which of the girls they were laughing at. At last, when someone had giggled their fill, they provided:

"Oh, it was nothing; just, something like you're dating that Jaeger kid, but figures it was a leg-pull," they said, wiping tiny droplets from the corners of their eyes.

The only gesture the dumbstruck Mikasa could manage was a distracted shake of head, and she didn't quite trust her mouth at that moment to deny it vocally: what composure she'd managed to keep was barely enough to hold up the indifferent facade she employed most of the time. She was much thankful for the group dropping the topic with a nonchalant 'thought so', but the mask, her priceless mask of impassivity was helplessly, inevitably slipping off and she had to get away, and fast, because-

The sound which literally ripped the atmosphere apart, which set many jaws to going slack and Sasha's eyes to widen almost comically, had the situation not been so desperate, which, by the worst of luck, brought the attention of the better part of the orchestra to the strings and the girl frozen in place near them in the process of leaving, the girl whose beautiful long skirt had just got stuck on a sharp steel bar that nobody had any idea of how it had gotten there and what it was doing in a concert hall, was the sound of tearing fabric.

For Mikasa, that was far too much stupefaction in the span of ten minutes - the second time, seriously.

The horror on Sasha's face was satisfactory as much as genuine, because her chair had successfully played its part in getting the hem of the dress impaled on that stick and because there was now, a meager couple of minutes away from the first bell, a foot-long rent running along Mikasa's leg, shaggy at the edges and looking decidedly nasty. The backstage was quiet like a crypt, the implications of an outfit ruined slowly being processed, and it wasn't until a chair scraped across the wood of the floor as Sasha sprang up in panic that the tension splintered apart with an almost audible dingle. There was a load of confusion afterwards, with the potato girl spewing apologies at the speed of light and nearly wailing, the conductor coming out in a haste to find out the reason for the disquieting commotion and Petra fumbling around in search of a sewing kit; Mikasa, together with her dress, were yielded to her hands and then everybody except the victim of the woman's needlework was rapidly ushered out and onto the stage at the reasoning of the first bell echoing loud and clear through the rooms, signalling the beginning of the end.

* * *

It was pitch dark by the time Eren and Mikasa - Armin had ditched them and forgone the celebrational get-together at a cafe in favour of a book he was dying to read - got out of the subway and onto a train connecting Trost to Shiganshina, the clouded sky robbing even more of their sight outside the range of late evening station lamp posts; one couldn't see zilch from the windows aside from the narrow strip of yellow grass catching light from within the car and the few raindrops slowly trailing down the outer side of the glass, giving the occasional flash of reflection. The car wasn't packed, in all seriousness, but still retained an unusual concentration of people, the leftovers from the rush hour that usually they came in smaller numbers; they made it quite impossible to secure the two sets of seats the musicians would need to put down their cumbersome instruments without the danger of having them follow the train's inertia, and so the pair was resigned to standing the half an hour ride, with Eren's plastic gig bag on the floor beside his legs and Mikasa's fabric one leaning on the back of the last one of the seats that were arranged perpendicularly to the aisle, thus trapping the two in the space between the bass and the end of the corridor. The girl mimicked her instrument by leaning against the window, the chill of its surface not in the least bit threatening to her woolen coat, but Eren circled his arms around her waist anyways, preferring to be safe than sorry and earning a sort of satisfaction in shielding her from the so-called entrance to their corner at the hand of some protective instinct. She, in turn, hooked her own arms beneath his and behind his back, her palms coming to rest on his shoulder blades just as the station outside jerked and floated away; the fatigue that had been subdued for a couple of minutes by the cool autumn air came back with a vengeance, prompting her to lean forward instead and press her cheek to the boy's chest just below the collarbone, the part of it not covered by the jacket, which had been left unfastened, the soft, determined heartbeat perfectly audible through the layers of wool and cotton. She could feel his calm breath shuffle the onyx strands on the back of her head when he exhaled, the presence of his hands on her waist and the firmness beneath her head and the overwhelming warmth giving her a distinct sense of safety as she indulged in the much-needed comfort, and the waves of his voice reverberating through her body served well to pull her even closer to sleep; he was asking a question, though, and she couldn't just disregard it like that.

"So what happened at the break?" he asked quietly, exchanging the placements of his hands as he unwrapped his arms, the palms settling on the curve right under her waist, and she bewailed the loss of that securing pressure.

"My dress ripped," she answered simply and felt him take a slightly deeper intake of air. "It's fine, Ms. Ral fixed it up for me, though I don't think there's any future for that dress now."

"Oh..." he paused then for a few seconds, stiffening as the train rolled into a station. "Well, that's Ms. Petra for you. At least nobody noticed," he smirked into her hair, eyes skidding around absentmindedly even as she hummed her consent, the sound sending ripples through his windpipe and downwards from there to flit between his ribs, and a sudden notion flicked to life in his head once his sight landed on the bass bag."You know what's good about that oversized violin of yours?"

"Hm?" She tilted her head in mild curiosity, the fabric of his shirt twisting under her ear, and he pulled away somewhat to reach her other ear, his voice a sweet and a little mischievous whisper hot against her skin.

"It makes a great screen."

It is only when his lips, warm and chapped and loving, find hers that the momentary separation is forgotten and the careless and nosy train lighting seems comfy and tepid, the rattle of wheels becoming a barely discernible springy lullaby somewhere in the background, along with the hum of the fixtures and the rhythmic swishing of lamp posts rushing past as they leave another stop on their way home, and there is a harmony in the movements of their mouths that could never be conveyed by music. Their lips mesh together time and time again in careful, short-lived kisses that reincarnate into the next ones, and there is such tenderness it threatens to overflow and make the heart burst because it feels way too fantastic to be that important to somebody, closer to surreal than anything, and for them, there is no recreating elsewhere the bond that allows them to share that wondrous sensation between each other. Armin had called it destiny once, more on a whim than seriously believing in fate, but it fit them well, fit the bewildering puzzle of circumstances, a picture of stained glass that the two of them had been gradually putting together for the better part of their lives, and though it was still far from complete, the outline that they could make out seemed breathtaking in its beauty and their minds short-circuited at trying to imagine the end result. It was something infinitely precious, something fragile and invincible and enormous and unnoticeable and just was, without a definition, because they've surpassed those the moment they met, and intolerable to comparison, the very base of existence that towered over everything, lingering on the horizon as a perpetual landmark, as the heap of maroon wool circling her neck snugly, intimately, thousands of strings making it up and holding it together. If it was there, if that person was there, nothing could erase that base, because that person was the base, and no ripped dresses or broken strings could do any damage, and during those moments, when all shells peeled off, it was far more than that - it was the existence.

_If you're by my side, I can do anything._

On the other side of the glass, highlighted by the lamps rapidly fading after a moment of brilliance, golden rain kept pelting on the window.

* * *

_**A/N2: **This was first conceived in my mind as a oneshot, but I might expand it into a twoshot, once the midterms are over. I'm an awfully slow writer, though, so you probably shouldn't hope for much. Sorry about that._


	2. A Score for Brass

_**A/N:** it's been what, a month? Gosh. That's too slow even for me. Sorry for the huge wait, guys. On another note, get ready for a teary-feely scene right off the bat. I'm not completely sure about that one, but if I say that writing from Carla's perspective is difficult, that would be one serious understatement. Point no. 2: I love description and details, and combining them even more, so please forgive me that small indulgence.  
_

* * *

Lamplight fell on the slightly damp grass, accentuating the blades' edges with a yellowish coldness, from that one window of the Jaegers' kitchen that stood closest to the dining table, the glow standing out like a sore thumb in the chilly autumn night blackness that veiled the rest of the suburban neighbourhood; the lamppost that loomed on the very rim of the area of visibility had been out of order for weeks, and while it was known that a complaint had long since been filed, whoever was responsible for replacing the bulbs didn't seem to find the situation pressing. Mentioned window was closed to at least try to battle the cold, and every living being outside it had fled to the warmer lands or withered ages ago, but on the other side, inside the room, life was bubbling like tea in a boiling kettle, in the precarious dingle of utensils and clanging of cups, in the words that flitted over the table and comfortable familiarity that prevailed over the three weeks of separation. Touring had never been easy on the concerned families and their uninvolved members, but 'at least the children weren't on the verge of collapsing in the evenings' and Carla had a few less worries to tend to, as long as her two musicians kept assuring her that they were well-fed and well-rested when away from home. Her husband had never been one to fuss over their health, but he took care of it in his own, doctor's way, with occasional advice and the authority of a man of medicine that not many dared rebuke. The children - she held on with dogged determination to the ignorance which allowed her to view them not as twenty- and twenty-one-year-olds, but as amateurs just out of middle school - seemed content enough so far with spending weeks on end in places remote and unexplored, if only by Carla's standards, and displeased as she may be with their regular absence, there was little she could do against the smile Eren beamed at her once he set about retelling the events of the latest trip, or the not often seen serenity which settled on Mikasa's face whenever he did so. The early days of November marked, together with a drop in temperatures, the halfway point of mandatory practice anyways, and in another two months the children would be back under Carla's wing to study their brains out for the finals, a fact she guiltily took selfish pleasure in.

"...but it came back for us some half an hour later. It was really weird, because somebody usually does a roll call after the departure, but I guess it was late and everyone was tired, and, well, people usually just shut down in the seats when we're driving into the night. Mr. Levi was furious," Eren snorted through his nose, recalling his superior's unpleasant reaction and drawing some indefinable amusement from it. Mikasa frowned at that, subtly as she always expressed emotions, and made a point of chiding him for forgetting to charge his phone, prompting the young man to put on an exasperated frown of his own, albeit a far fiercer one, and rebuke the knock. "You didn't notice it yourself, neither you, nor Armin, some friends you are." The fake pout had too strong an effect on the girl, though, and he sported a panicked expression for a moment before rapidly backtracking and coming uncommonly close to apologizing in his desperate strife to amend the desolation his words had left behind: it seemed that age did very little to impart him with a skill of thinking before speaking.

"So... Mom," Eren set his mug down with barely a clink and tried his best not to look anxious or alarmingly serious. Had Carla not been his mother, she would've been fooled seven times over. "About those plans..."

"Sorry, dear," she smiled apologetically, even though there was little real remorse in her heart, and as the boy showed no indication of busting her cover, she supposed she could make a guess at where his acting talents came from, "Looks like we won't make it this year either. Things aren't going too well at the clinic."

"Is it bad?" Now the pretence of composure was off of his face, and a wave of mixed content and purely maternal sadness at seeing her son troubled rushed over her, complete with the backward pull that longed to plunge her into a sea of badly timed contemplation. She knew full well just where he was going with that question and didn't want him or Mikasa, who was certain to join in on the persuasion attack shall Eren decide to launch one, giving up the hard-earned money that they would need later on in their lives.

"Not nearly bad enough to worry about it, but striking camp would be quite troublesome in the near future," Grisha cut in before she could answer, probably deciding to take discussion of financial matters into his own hands, although she couldn't be so sure as his eyes twinkled with a glimmer of subtle slyness behind the rim of his glasses. "Unless an opportunity presents itself, we'll have to wait it out," and he dove back into his tea, as if he hadn't just given the children the disappointment of the year.

"Oh... Okay," the boy scratched his neck a bit uneasily, but seemed completely unfazed otherwise, taking his mug and then setting it back down seconds later with a little more noise than absolutely necessary. His face communicated a small degree of apprehensiveness, but his gaze was set, just the way it had been when he announced he was applying for St. Maria Music Academy, part of the Sina University, instead of law school some five or so years ago, and that determination easily translated into Carla's uneasiness, because he was clearly aware that whatever he was going to say would not score him a pat on the head. "So, um... I was- I was just - thinking that, uhm... Maybe, it would be easier if we moved somewhere close to downtown, we as in, me and Mikasa..." His speech, which had been switching tempo like mad in the beginning, gradually evened out, but simultaneously lost some volume once he felt the adults' eyes on him and partly on the girl to his left, and then he sprang into a whirlwind of excuses-turned-reasons. "I mean, we'll barely be sleeping there, what with all the touring and stuff, so it doesn't have to be big and expensive or anything, and if it's in downtown, it'll be closer to the hall so we won't have to spend four hours getting there and back every day, since, well, it's pretty much decided that we're joining that place anyway and-"

"Eren," Mikasa spoke up, a hand cautiously grazing his upper arm, and he stilled in his tirade, eyes stopping their darting and settling on his mother's form.

Carla was tearing up.

It wasn't her intention to suddenly get reduced to a sobbing wreck, and to her own mind, she was pretty far from it and holding up just fine, but there was a titan-sized crack running across her mask, she could almost hear it, and she felt that her composure would not last long despite all the amount of mental preparation she'd done for that moment. She'd known all along that a time would come in the process of nurturing, pestering, teaching and berating that they would go outside alone, without her watchful eye to catch them before they get into any real trouble, and never really come back home, because they would find it somewhere else, and she knew as well that she should be happy for her dear children to finally be growing up, but to her, who knew just how big a sham all this 'growing up' business had always been, the prospect seemed infinitely dreary. Now that it wasn't a prospect anymore, but actual reality, she was lost and confused and didn't know how to calm them down, seeing as how the tears that had slipped through her defences were throwing them into panic, and had not a clue as to how to calm down herself, because one thought led to another and suddenly, in front of her eyes was a picture of the last third - even half if she is (un)lucky - of her life passing in such unaccustomed quiet and solitude, she shook with some bitter emotion, Grisha's presence evading her mind in the semi-hysteria she had successfully wrenched herself into.

It all went away at the sensation of Eren's shaking hands on her face, wiping off the salty liquid that smeared on her cheeks and stained his palms, and it suddenly dawned on her that no, he couldn't remain a child forever, and yet... And yet, he carried as much of her blood as he had always been carrying, he was no less Eren than usual for the fact that the top of his head was more difficult to reach, and maybe, _maybe_ she could learn to associate the young man in front of her with the boy that had given her so much grief and joy.

"Mom, what are you... Don't cry, please..." Eren was mildly panicking and completely clueless, wild guesses popping up in his mind: he said something wrong, he had been too pushy, she thought he was abandoning home, she thought he hated her or something, the list went on. His mother was a woman of strictness and determination when it came to children, the occasional major scolding an exception that was usually called upon for a very good reason, so seeing her break down was a definite first with which he didn't have the slightest idea of what to do. He wasn't going back on his word, no, that had already been discussed and decided with Mikasa many times over, but something had to be done, and the girl wasn't of much help either, blinking emotionlessly and only a little bit worriedly in her silence. "Come on, Mom, tell me what's wrong."

There was some sniffing on Carla's part, and Eren held his hands back as she wiped her own palms across her cheeks; the tears were stopping now that the vagueness had been battled and deflected, and there was enough strength left, scraped up from the most derelict of corners, to make that one, last step that the miserable face she was wearing wasn't worth.

So she smiles through the last of her tears before speaking.

"You've grown up well," and her wrinkled hand reaches out to pet his head and ruffle his hair out of its painstakingly combed neatness, just like she used to be able to do so easily; he is wide-eyed and startled and looks at a loss of what to think, but she knows he gets it; she knows he gets it, and it barely crosses her mind to deny him the hug he has crushed her into, because 'silly boy, you're a grown man now', but the notion is instantly deemed foolish and discarded as far away as it can go.

Mikasa watched the exchange from her spot at the table, not feeling important enough to interfere. It had been more than ten years since her admittance into the Jaeger household, and her feelings about her family had for a long time been mixed, because memory is a feeble thing, and at times, she found certain pieces of it missing, having slipped into the darkness quietly, like a pebble into a lake, and every time was easier to take on than the previous one. She still struggled to keep the faces clear, and the voices seemed bent on staying as well - not quite voices, but words, more likely; snippets of sentences and random sound bites, - but details had vanished into oblivion, leaving behind only a sense, a mirage of having been loved. The memories of her two mothers mixed up sometimes, and it confused the hell out of her on each occasion as drawing a line between the two was becoming increasingly difficult, but now, her second mother would be out of her life as well and gradually merge with the image of the first one, leaving behind nothing but a crossbreed phantom, despite logic's vain attempts at reminding Mikasa of the first decade of her life. In the end, after some time passed, it would all be something that used to be, no distinction between 'earlier' and 'later', a jumbled mess of bittersweet, but no less precious memories.

"Are you worried?" The voice that tugged her back into reality was quiet, patient and unmistakably Grisha's, and she glanced at the man - he'd never really become her second father, seeing as how he had already been part of her life, though not very significant, before everything, quite literally, went crashing down, but he was family nonetheless. "Afraid, maybe?"

"Not really," she replied into her mug, only slightly confused about the belatedly noticed lack of apprehension; she supposed she had already been through that, when the intoxicating euphoria of impending change wore off for the first time and she could glance at their intentions with clearer eyes. Besides, "Eren will be there, it'll be fine."

The bespectacled man gave a long, quiet, barely amused 'hmm', half in consent, half in what seemed like contemplation, and the rims of his glasses partly concealed the concentrated slope of his eyebrows as he observed her from the corner of his eye in a manner that reminded her that people didn't work as doctors, they lived as such.

"We'll be fine," she echoed her own words with a small alteration, not entirely sure whether there had been any point in doing so: it might have been done for the purpose of convincing Grisha, or herself, or maybe it was just her tongue unknotting grace of a whole day of dozing on Eren's shoulder in the bus seat on their trip back from the latest tour's terminus. She should probably be feeling something now that the 'moving out' issue had somewhat settled down, but there was little else aside from a certain blurred awareness that whatever was waiting for them, that was the way it was supposed to be.

"Well, it is gratifying, indeed, to see you two grow into fine adults," Grisha spoke, the searching glint finally leaving the inside of his glasses and a reflection of a small smile befitting a well-respected doctor taking its place as he reclined on his spot as much as his steely composure allowed, which wasn't exactly much. "It isn't going to be easy, as far from it as it can get, in fact, and I'm speaking from my own experience, but... If we speak in terms of starting something completely new, it is my bet that this time will undoubtedly bring something wonderful in tow."

Her mind then stumbled and landed right into an image of one of the thousand of possible routes that her future – their future – could take from that point on, but it didn't last a second after a call reached her ears.

"Mikasa," the voice beckoned, and she took Carla up on the one-armed invitation, plunging into what thus became a group hug, never once conscious of the weak smile on her own lips.

* * *

Moving house was, if Mikasa was asked to summarise, an exhausting and tedious business.

For one, she had never known she had that much stuff in her possession. She lost count somewhere on the second dozen of cardboard boxes and plastic bags, and there was also the furniture that had to be transported separately, because all that useful and not so whatnot, hers and Eren's combined, had taken up the entire back of Arlerts' borrowed van, backseats included. Then there was the general fuss, mess and clutter, things getting lost inexplicably and/or unwittingly, trying to ward off Carla with her insistence that they had some proper breakfast before setting out on their third (and, thankfully, last) trip and hitting the shops straight after that, the very shops that seemed, at least to their eyes, to have been redesigned from top to bottom and no one knew where the linens stands, or most of the other necessities, for that matter, were anymore. And then, of course, was the unavoidable struggle of 'who is to carry the heavier boxes' that began with the very first batch of cargo unloaded and didn't abate until the door lock clicked its closing: they'd stood in the street for minutes on end, locking the metaphorical antlers over yet another boxfull of books, study and otherwise, that was expectedly both ponderous and glued to Eren's hands; they'd huffed and snapped and used up all sensible arguments and finally decided not to go for brute force, because that would probably have been disastrous.

Looking back on it from her debatably comfortable perch on one of the boxes stacked in the hallway with peeling wallpaper, it could have been much worse. Or much longer. Or both. With how much studying they had to jam into every day before the finals, time was of essence.

In the 2pm late February daylight, the sky still quite cloudy in the earnest winter fashion, the small, narrow hallway looked far better than its actual state; shrouded in shadows and highlighted only by what spilled through the open doors of the two bedrooms were the mentioned wallpaper, the suspiciously dark spots on the crudely painted, but luxuriously high, as in many similar buildings of that century, ceiling, the thin, curling at the corners linoleum strewn over what felt like bare bricks. They had seen it all back during their tour of the apartment, including the impeccable condition of the kitchen and the bathroom to the left of the front door that bore a multitude of fresh-looking locks, the shiny new hinges on every single door, the tall, sturdy windows with their lofty sills, the dark, worn, yet still durable parquetry in the bedrooms. For the price that they were offered, this was more than they could have ever expected, and Eren had actually called the deal a miracle before somebody broke to him that a respected doctor's connections were not to be taken lightly.

"Are we going to tell them?" She queried in a quiet, slightly broken voice that bore a little more than her usual degree of indifference to mask any worry that might seep through her facade, and heard Eren put a box down in the farther bedroom.

"Yeah, it's not like we can keep on ditching that forever," he sighed from the door frame as he trod back into the hall, crouching beside the boxes to try to distinguish them in the dark. "Dunno when's best, though... Hit the switch? I can't see a word."

Light from a small pendant light flooded the room and Eren promptly grabbed a box out of Mikasa's makeshift throne, which she was forced to vacate on short notice; the moment he turned his back on her, however, an unexpected sight made him pause.

"Hey, Mikasa, was that door always there?"

"What?"

Yet for all her puzzlement, there it was, at the very end of the small hallway, previously draped with darkness and staring back at Eren. If she recalled correctly, a wardrobe used to loom in that so-called alcove next to the bedroom, covering up the whole two metres' width.

"It wasn't on the blueprints, was it?"

"No, I don't think... Eren, wait!" but of course he wouldn't listen, hot-headed and impulsive as he had been for the better part of his life and as curious as ever. "They wouldn't have blocked a door without a reason, it might be..."

- but he had already twisted the handle and spun the dryness- and age-rattled piece of wood away from his form, stepping fearlessly and foolishly into the blinding light that streamed from beyond that feeble border, and Mikasa didn't catch her hand in time before it reached for the light switch again, couldn't stop her feet from pacing forward on their own accord, the movement purely autonomous with the only reason being Eren, Eren, Eren, Eren who could easily get himself into trouble, Eren whom she wanted to keep safe, Eren whom she would follow to the edge and over –

"...dangerous."

The crude, divergent in width, length and thickness wooden planks spread over the floor were steady enough to walk upon, though the layer of fine dust her every step raised into the stagnant air was no consolation; for providing the latter there were arc-topped picture windows, a multitude of them fitted into the curve of the quarter-circle room, that began at their ankles and ended a hand's breadth from the ceiling. Mikasa's eyes burned at the sudden upscale of brightness, but her ears worked well in registering Eren's footsteps and the stop in their slow drumming, and in a few seconds, once the ache in her retina subsided and she had taken in the bare walls and the crumbles of plaster, she was by his side, skipping over the bustling city beneath and settling her gaze on the clearing cotton of spring clouds and the vivid splotches of baby blue that signaled the end of winter.

Spring, with all its humidity, night frosts, mocking drizzles, snotty colds and academic struggles, was going to be as far from easy as it could get, a voice from her memories provided, unasked.

Her fingers slipped into the safety of his palm, squeezed in barely a ghost of the gesture, and were grasped in turn, held delicately and yet resolutely in that large, calloused hand that had since times immemorial been her source of warmth.

_Something wonderful is about to begin._

* * *

**_A/N2: _**_Now, this is the official end of any plot that might have been there - two chapters, seriously,that's just funny.** Maybe, **sometime in the faraway future, I'll come up with some remotely interesting bits and pieces in-between that would be worth publishing, but, as usual, you better not trust me on this kind of promise :) I currently have two, no, three, - wait, forgot this one, four AUs going on a roller-coaster inside my head, so... Whichever hits me first, considering that one of those is pretty large and has been in process since early summer 2013 and is likely to take a lot more time. I'll try to squeeze some oneshots in there, though._

_Reviews are the bread and butter of my happiness, guys, so don't be shy, I don't bite. Faves work well too, so please, if you think this is worth it, spare half a minute to tell me that, please._

_Yours, Chartis_


	3. The Unsnappable Strings

**_A/N:_**_The bucket of snot which is this chapter I blame on Misawa Aki's "Yume no Owari ni" - very beautiful and very sad, if only in my opinion. The chapter's not completely sad, though, so no need to worry. It still seems kind of slim to me, and the tenses are messed up, too, but I hope I've done well. The next chapter, most likely a bunch of drabbles, will be up no sooner than January.  
_

* * *

She couldn't believe it.

Washing her precious scarf was almost a ritual, a sacred act that no one else was allowed to participate in, parents included. Only by going through the familiar movements with her own hands could she be assured that it was handled with utmost care. But, alas, fabric tended to stain, and as she would not tolerate one of those on her precious memento, some brutality had to be executed for the sake of restoring it to its full glory.

Almost tearing the scarf in two did _not_ come as part of the routine.

It shouldn't have struck her as that much of a surprise after all those years of wearing it day in and day out whenever the weather allowed. Her memory wasn't all that dependable - it had been at least seven years since her acquisition of the garment, after all, - but it was largely convincing in stating that the texture had been much fuller, that the threads had thinned out over time and lost some of the fluff that would often stick to her lips. Every single bit of her common sense was telling her that the scarf had certainly seen better days and that its last ones had just ended.

She didn't want to listen to common sense this time.

"What're you doing up so late, hon?" Her father returned home from his evening shift at the worst possible time, well after midnight, but at least he didn't appear angry, just exhausted and a little puzzled; she only spared him a glance before returning to the needlework she was trying to start for the umpteenth time that night, the soft kitchen light sharpening the creases on the man's forehead. "Go to sleep already, the scarf won't go anywhere."

She observed his face, pale from fatigue and touched along the corners of the eyes and the mouth by age and yet smiling calmly, calmingly, and with obvious reluctance folded the material in her hands, placing it on a nearby shelf so that she didn't, gods forbid, forget about it come morning. Dad released a breath so quietly she might have simply imagined it and mumbled a gibberish "G'night" before retreating into the darkness of the bedroom, and she cast a short, troubled look at the sable-hued fabric, not having any particular reason aside from a nagging premonition that this wasn't going to end well and the alien feeling of having something important torn from her.

Soon, it would be a year since she'd last seen Eren.

_Snap._

It wasn't there in the morning.

"Mom, did you see my scarf?" She told herself that it wasn't alarm that surged through her veins at that moment, just puzzlement, because inanimate things didn't pull unreasonable tricks like vanishing on their own. "I put it here last night."

When her mother turns away from the stove to face her, there is the briefest hint of confusion raking through the woman's eyes, but then it is replaced with something akin to guilt, which is quickly smothered and hidden deep inside, because parents didn't pull unreasonable tricks like looking guilty in front of their children. When something cold, wet and heavy slammed into her stomach from the inside, she wasn't sure if it was horror or betrayal, but it was making her throat hurt.

"Oh my, darling, I'm so sorry," the woman said with only the slightest trace of guilt weaved carefully into her face and voice. "I thought it was just a rag and threw it out this morning. Did you like it much?"

She figures, from the way her mother's shoulders sag slightly and the ends of her eyebrows droop, that her face must have fallen visibly, but she can't feel any change or additional strain in her facial muscles, and, surprisingly, perplexity avoids her like plague; her mind is reeling, ever slow to wrap itself around the gaping hollowness that was at last becoming visible. Why was she even holding so tightly onto that scarf? The 'It was a present from Eren' reason only half-qualifies, and 'It's the only lasting bond' just sounds miserable, which she had always thought she was not, yet as her mother drones on about buying a new one, she reminisces a short, blurred memory of ruining her favorite plushie, of how she kept on denying that they buy a replacement, of the roiling awareness that it was wrong, and it dawns on her, just like that, like a bunch of puzzle pieces fitting in at once, that it were the memories that kept her coiled in that old, ragged scarf that was turning see-through from age. Memories of Eren wouldn't be bought anew.

If there was no seeing him anymore, at least the memories she wanted to keep.

_Snap._

Mom's fluffy, cashmere-soft muffler enveloped her neck like it belonged there, comfortable and homely and never too loud about its own presence, so much that she almost forgot to take it off once the school foyer's warm breath reached her face. It was warm to an exactly right extent, not making her sweat or draw it closer to her throat, and not a single time did she have to battle a persistent itch that wool was prompt to creating at any given opportunity; her mother had kept on gushing about how chequered beige suited a girl way more than plain brownish black for minutes, about how it was about time she made an attempt to make herself look presentable now that she was growing up, and it had been a fair bit of time since she'd last seen mom so excited.

She couldn't bring herself to wear it on the way home.

It was cold without any sort of barrier between the thin skin of her neck and the sub-zero December air, and the thick, silky-looking blanket of snow that had accumulated over the time spent at school did little to help the matter aside from providing some aesthetic comfort; her throat began to smart ten minutes into the mile-and-something walk, and she pulled the collar of her coat closer, thankful for the lack of wind. The route home lay mostly through what in summer became a patchwork of fields and plains, mountains looming in the distance, but with the chilly white mousse flowing like whipped cream over the ground, the monochrome landscape was only brightened by a few trees and a ramshackle fence running along the rims of the narrow road, the closest houses looking no bigger than the fingernail of her thumb.

She was cold, in the middle of nowhere, alone.

Her hand went for her phone.

It might be stupid and naive, the way loneliness seemed to beat her to a pulp in a matter of minutes, but without the constant reassurance of the treasured piece of woolen fabric to soothe the longing, if only by way of self-delusion, the nearly boundless off-white emptiness closed in on her like a predator, reducing her very existence to an insignificant speck of conflicted emotions. It might be even more stupid to suddenly text someone after more than a year of utter silence, but she wasn't thinking straight, obviously - not that specks were supposed to have space inside them for a working brain, - and at that moment, afraid of vanishing into nothingness, she wanted nothing but to grasp at the bonds that held her in place and stop herself from floating away.

It wasn't there.

Apparently, double- and triple-checking did not equal the magical manipulations for conjuring something that wasn't there, but was supposed to be, because it was plain common sense that she had Eren's number in her phone, memory and also on paper somewhere, most likely in that one old enough to look positively terrifying notebook that dad had authoritatively burned in the fireplace some years ago. Yet, her mind kept drawing blanks at the most random of places in the line of figures that she must have known as well as her own birthday, and the contact list, brand new, shiny and devastatingly short, stayed the way it was. Phones die every day, even the old, seemingly immortal ones, but she still cursed her luck, or lack thereof, her own carelessness, the silly lump of plastic and metal that refused to charge and had to be replaced with another useless lump of plastic that was barely half a year old and didn't have Eren's number - but thankfully, Armin's was there, and though the blond was overseas at the moment, away on an exchange programme, she could always ask him for Eren's afterwards... By that time, any recklessness she might have spontaneously worked up for the sake of breaking that too-long-to-be-true silence would wear off.

_Snap._

_Snap._

"Eren..."

Four letters which slipped through slackened lips was all it took.

What was it, the trigger that set off the agonizing constriction of her throat? The sound of his name spoken in her voice was too simple, too common (not since a year ago), too familiar, too nostalgic. Realization washed over her wave after smothering wave, and she struggled for air under the mass of inescapable despair. She didn't want to feel as if everything was out of her control. She didn't want to feel Eren drifting farther and farther away. She didn't want to get carried away by the current. She didn't want to forget. At that rate, Eren would be as good as having never even existed, not a single proof of a person having lived would remain aside from a few people's unreliable, easily doubted memory. Without anything to remember him by, how could she be sure that her memory wouldn't pull a fast one on her, that the priceless fact of their meeting, the time spent together, wouldn't be reduced to less than dust, to shapeless, unrecognizable debris?

The tears burned the corners of her eyes and froze on her cheeks that seemed no warmer than the surrounding air, leaving behind an unpleasant tightened sensation and frost-glazed tracks that shimmered as if with stardust.

It felt as if the threads connecting them were snapping, one by one, loose ends disappearing in the fog of routine, but not before rebounding right at her, and each consecutive humiliating smack seemed harder than the last, and her own powerlessness magnified it tenfold.

She couldn't quite pinpoint the moment when harsh, strained sobs turned into a silent mental wail which bordered on a scream, but it wasn't in human power to stay indifferent as the pressure in her ribcage kept rising until she could almost feel the bones cracking, but they did not, the tension remained, spreading all the way from the jugular to the diaphragm, so she had no choice but to cry it out, the pain, the fear, the longing, in a primordial hope that they would all go away, like a child who didn't know the word for what was wrong with her and relied on the simplest means available to alert anyone who cared. But she was alone there, nearly a mile each way to the closest human being, and even if no one was there to give her the comfort she craved, it was only in the middle of nowhere, with not a single soul to see her, that she could allow herself to cry and lament that which might have slipped through her fingers too smoothly and silently to be caught in time.

"Mikasa!"

Time, of which she had lost notice entirely, stood still then, bating its insidious breath, as snow crunched repeatedly behind her and the sinking, sucking sensation behind the sternum burst outward, her eyes widening in unabated surprise at the oh-so-familiar pitch that robbed her of weight.

Mikasa whirled around.

The voice had given him away, but she held onto the momentary skepticism, that tiny conviction that kept whispering 'it's too good to be true' in her mind, until her eyes landed on the dark brown of the boy's hair that she had seen so many shades of, on the set of facial features she'd scrutinize on the rare occasion that he was in deep enough thought, and then she could have toppled under all the relief and utter, ineffable happiness that tumbled down on her heart. Her face seemed a little slow to catch up, stuck in that deer-in-the-headlights expression, but that was fine, such small things didn't matter anymore.

"Hey," he shot a small smile, and her feet shifted, bringing her body round to face him in a couple of frantic, uncertain steps. "Long time no see. Just thought I'd drop by, don't have much time."

"Eren? Why are you here?" She was in some sort of a daze, not really in sync with what her body was doing and her mouth saying, and not in control either; it was as if she was watching herself from a bit afar, but close nonetheless.

"Ah-" his eyes widened with sudden recollection, "we're moving back here in a couple of weeks. By the way, what the hell are you doing outside without a scarf on?" His irritation was clear, and there it was again, his hands working around her neck to make sure his scarf was properly tucked in her coat, motions a bit jerky, but careful, and the redness in his cheeks must have been frost biting the skin, but maybe, maybe, and that was enough for the warmth flowering in that strange spot under the sternum that was the heart but not quite.

She supposed she'd knocked all the wind out of him with the embrace she suddenly found herself catching him in, but she couldn't find it in herself to care much at that moment, because Eren was there, Eren was real, breathing, heart beating, so close and so tangible, and she was sobbing the moment her face met the fur on his jacket's collar and the wool of the sweater he wore underneath, the tears not plunging daggers into her gut anymore. On the edge of awareness, his hands gripped her shoulders and his voice called to her, alarmed, but little mattered now that he was there.

It was all right now.

* * *

"It's all right now, hush... Jeez, if falling asleep to music makes you dream weird stuff, don't do it," a sleepy voice chided, and it was some time before Mikasa realised that the surroundings were much darker than they were supposed to be for a winter afternoon. The warmth and a hint of Eren's scent remained, but there was no chilling breeze to speak of, and slowly, her mind caught up to the feeling of soft blankets clinging to her back and somebody's legs tangled with hers. Eren's presence as a whole was a somewhat later realization, one which came to her at the same time as she noticed his palm resting on her shoulders, the thumb rubbing slow, sloppy circles into the skin over the thick flannel of her pajamas, or her own hands gripping the fabric of his tee like a lifeline; the patch that she had apparently buried her face in was somewhat wet. She detached her forehead from where it was plastered to his chest, and the cool air rushed into the vacated space, sweeping over the tear tracks on her cheeks and clearing some sleep from her eyes.

"Why are you..."

"You were crying like no tomorrow, of course I-" he sputtered off, and though it was too dark to make out his face, she was sure it was sporting a blush of an undefined degree. "It's a wonder Mom didn't wake up," he mumbled finally, scrambling out of the pit of embarrassment he'd dug for himself.

"Thanks," she whispered after a short pause, and his arm slid around her back as the only response given. "What time is it?"

"Still early, sleep," were the drowsy words muttered over her head, which she had tucked back into his neck, and the last flickers of a dream she could barely remember - as far as she was concerned, it involved her parents, and she might have been on the point of losing something important - flitted behind closed eyelids before returning to the world they had come from.


End file.
